Puritan Family
New England was the laboratory of Puritan ideas. ... Puritan ideology consisted of a staunch belief in Calvins Institutes, covenant relationships, and a theocracy. ... The family, the church and the state were three areas of a Puritan conception of bringing about the kingdom of God in the New World. In many ways the Puritans viewed the family as the most important of the three areas. ... Morgan, "If the family failed to teach its members properly, neither the state nor the church could be expected to accomplish much” (Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Family, p. ... The Puritans were basically a farming family. ... They usually had a family consisting of a husband and wife and three or four children. ... The Puritans had a view family government, and family worship, as a total obligation of the Christian head of a household. A Puritan household included servants as well as wife and children. The Puritans also described the believers covenant with Christ in family language. ... To view in family language meant that one was marriage to his wife and Christ. ... He was the one Biblically in charge of ruling and guiding the family in the way that Bible said. "Every morning immediately upon rising and every evening before retiring a good Puritan father led his household in prayer, in scriptural reading, and in singing of psalms" (Morgan, pp. ... New England Puritans, like their counterparts in England and Scotland, did not view family worship as a rival to congregational worship, but rather as its complement: "Domestic instruction and worship was considered indispensable to the success of the weekly services in the church, for religion was too important a matter to be left to weekly lessons" (Morgan, p.